Mixed Use: The Latest Architecture and News

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Aedas is nearing completion on the sales gallery for the mixed-use Shanghai Greenland Qingpu Xujing District complex. The gallery, shaped as a leaf, is designed to fit with the "clover leaf" concept of the nearby Qingpu Xujing Conference and Exhibition Centre, in which it will be connected with by a pedestrian bridge.

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French firm Vincent Callebaut Architectures (VCA) has unveiled a new multi-use complex for Nasr City in Cairo. Designed to obtain LEED Gold Plus standing, the building features a solar roof, green terraces, sky villas, and a vertical system of gardens and solar heating tubes. Composed of 1000 apartment units, the Gate Residence is also designed to include a health club and spa, fitness center, business center, restaurants and cafe, retail, and medical center.

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• Architects

  OMA

• Location

  Meent 119, 3011 JH Rotterdam, The Netherlands

• Partners In Charge

  Rem Koolhaas, Reinier de Graaf

• Associate

  Alex de Jong

• Project Team

  Philippe Braun, Clarisa Garcia Fresco, Maaike Hawinkels, Andrew Linn, Takeshi Murakuni, Peter Rieff, Tom Tang, Sakine Dicle Uzanyayla, Mark Veldman

• Interior Team

  Saskia Simon, Andrea Giannotti, Ross O'Connell, Mafalda Rangel, Lucia Zamponi, Grisha Zotov

• Area

  43370.0 sqm

• Project Year

  2015

• Photographs

  Ossip van Duivenbode, Courtesy of OMA

• Location

  Meent 119, 3011 JH Rotterdam, The Netherlands

• Project Year

  2015

• Photographs

  Ossip van Duivenbode, Courtesy of OMA

• Area

  43370.0 m2

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Rotterdam’s very own, MVRDV has completed the Netherlands’ first covered market: the Markthal Rotterdam. Unlike any other market in the world, the Markthal presents a new urban hybrid that unites a market hall with housing.

Within the hollow core of the 228-unit, “horseshoe-shaped” residential building is an expansive, 40-meter-tall public market, offering 96 fresh food stalls, 8 restaurants and supermarket. Colorful murals cover the arch’s vaulted interior, peering through the largest single glazed cable net facades in Europe, which enclose the market. 

This sense of transparency and openness was key, as the Markthal is the driving force to the rejuvenation of the Laurenskwartier area and hopes to attract thousands of visitors each year.

A look inside, after the break.

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Videos

Developer Ivanhoé Cambridge has confirmed plans for a major, multi-phased office and transit development in the heart of Toronto’s financial core, just east of Union Station. Designed by London-based Wilkinson Eyre, following an international competition, the two-tower development will rise on both sides of the railway tracks and connect via an elevated public park. The South tower will include a major new GO Bus Terminal serving Union Station and will be topped with commercial retail.

More on the development, after the break.

BIG has unveiled plans for Bassin 7 (BSN7), a new civic-minded, mixed-use neighborhood in Denmark’s second largest city. The phased development will “breathe life into the harbor front,” placing importance on the public realm by organizing the site’s seven residential buildings with a series of recreational and cultural activities, including a beach zone, swimming pools, theater and cafe, along a public promenade.

Videos

Details have been released on Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners’ first project in the Middle East: Maryah Plaza. The four-tower, one billion dollar scheme will be built on Abu Dhabi’s 114 hectare Al Maryah Island, which is slated to become the emirate’s central business district.

Amazon has confirmed plans to move more than 5,000 of its London employees into a Foster + Partners-designed office building planned for Shoreditch High Street. On hold since January 2012, the £290 million mixed-use scheme will compete with Amazon’s Farringdon office to serve as the online retailer’s new UK headquarters.

Sydney's historic George Street is about to receive a major facelift with the soon-to-be built 333 George Street, an 18 storey mixed use office and retail tower. Designed by Grimshaw Architects and executive architects Crone Partners for Australian property developer Charter Hall, the minimal glass and steel tower will contrast the historic structures on Sydney's well-preserved original high street, with a 15 storey 12,500 square metre contemporary office tower tower atop a three storey 2,100 square metre retail podium.

Read on after the break for more on Sydney's newest tower.

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The Tianjin University Research Institute of Architectural Design and Urban Planning (AATU) recently won an international competition to design a hub for Chinese food-processing and stock-breeding company Luoniushan in Sanya, Hainan. With expectations to break ground this year, the 42-hectare multi-functional park will house the company's new headquarters as well as warehouses, serviced apartments, a tourism and exhibition center, and more. For more images and information, continue after the break.

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Frank Gehry and Developer David Mirvish have revealed the latest design iteration in their embattled plan to build a set of mixed-use skyscrapers in Toronto. The new design reduces the number of towers, from three to two, however the remaining towers are taller than before, with one at 82 stories and one at 92.

The buildings will house apartments, a new art gallery and space for OCAD University as previously planned, but the decision to use two towers instead of three means that three of the five existing buildings can be retained - including the Princess of Wales Theatre, and two designated heritage warehouses - sidestepping some of the criticisms of the previous scheme.

Read on after the break for Frank Gehry's take on the design

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Herreros Arquitectos just sent us their recent project for a mixed-use building in Casablanca, Morocco. Resulting from a series of urban, spatial, formal and sustainable variables, the project--which includes housing, commercial and athletic spaces--is characterized by a permeable facade that directly responds to the climate. The repeated decorative element is a reinterpretation of a traditional geometric code that is common to the region.

The project was featured in the Moroccan Pavilion in the 2014 Venice Biennale. Find the images and product description, after the break.

GRAFT and Kleihues+Kleihues has teamed up with Genossenschaft für urbane Kreativität (Cooperative for urban Creativity) to realize a complex of five towers centered around working and living in Berlin, Germany. Titled “Eckwerk,” the new complex is set to rise within the confines of an existing viaduct, whose shape and materiality served as the project’s main source of inspiration.

Construction has commenced on MAD’s Chaoyang Park Plaza within one of Beijing’s largest public parks and central business district. A continuation of Ma Yansong’s “Shan-Shui City” concept, which aims reintroduce nature into the urban realm, the mixed-use complex reinterprets natural formations illustrated in traditional Chinese paintings as contemporary “city landscapes.”

“Like the tall mountain cliffs and river landscapes of China, a pair of asymmetrical towers creates a dramatic skyline in front of the park,” described MAD. “Ridges and valleys define the shape of the exterior glass facade, as if the natural forces of erosion wore down the tower into a few thin lines.” 

Sector 66 of Gurgaon, India will be the site of Maison Edouard François’ newest project: a massive luxury complex crowned by three stainless steel-clad skyscrapers. Given over entirely to opulence, Guragon 66 will house a hotel, a multiplex cinema, and an apartment complex. Yet its most defining feature may be its shopping mall, which covers most of the ground floor. This glass-canopied commercial center will host internationally known brands, such as Fendi and Chanel, in independent marble buildings within the main structure.

These shopping "embassies" will be grouped along the mall axis in a manner resembling a traditional European neighborhood. At the same time, the roofs of the shops will be utilized as restaurant space, and will be connected to each other by elevated footbridges. This is intended to create a unique, multi-level promenade which the architects describe as "an exterior landscape that is air-conditioned and unified beneath the glass canopy of the mall."